I use Mac for work, Linux/Gnome for personal use, and have used Windows up to and including 11 both personally and professionally in the past (although a lot less recently).
In terms of the desktop environment, I feel Mac is severely lacking behind. I know there are very mixed opinions on Gnome, but to me the Gnome UX feels extremely well thought out in comparison.
The apple ecosystem might be very well integrated, but in terms of the macOS UX it feels the exact opposite. Why can’t I close an app from mission control? Why can’t I launch apps from mission control, but need to e.g. open launchpad first? In Gnome the activities view unities all of those experiences in a way that is seamless and just clicks for me, but in macOS everything seems to be separate apps/features that don’t play together at all (out of the box at least). Add to that all the other small frustrations that you need to address with third party tools, it is - for me at least - a very unproductive out-of-the-box experience.
Of course this is subjective, and might be partially an issue of (my lack of) skill/experience.
This is entirely a skill issue. I don't mean that dismissively, let me teach you the Mac way to close apps.
You hit ⌘-Tab, this brings up a list of every app you have open. Keep the thumb on the ⌘. More tabs go right, ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q. When done, release ⌘.
My preferred way to launch an app is ⌘-Space and the first few letters of its name. This can have some frustrating delays of a second or two, but it will for the most part remember what you've opened. Other users are much more dock-oriented, I keep it hidden on the side and use it seldom.
> ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q
I didn't know about either of these, thanks.
Also apparently, up or down brings up a view of all the windows for that app.
A while ago I put together some hammerspoon lua for making cmd-tab go by window instead of by app because that's how my brain works, but it's slower than the native cmd-tab. Are there other similar hidden tricks for Dock.app (which, I presume, is the thing that makes the cmd-tab overlay appear)?
You can two-finger drag to make the selected app move around, although I rarely do so.
You can also three-finger drag down on the selected app to get Mission Control view for that app, to select a window directly. I do that somewhat more often.
Those are the other ones I know. Discoverability of the various affordances in the macOS interface is terrible, but it stays pretty consistent over the years.
There should be a manual of a couple hundred pages. I miss the days when that was standard.
Not to disregard your remarks, I suspect they are valid, but they come from habits of uses of others systems, and there's also the good practice to avoid introducing too much ways to do the same thing, because it's dramatically augments your chances that it is known by all (in the end), works well and as expected.
Hence launchpad is only here to shortcut finding your apps in the finder or the dock, mission control just an increment over spaces. Those are not replacement for dock. So quitting app, aside the app shortcut and menu, goes through the dock, either by dock app menu or ⌘+Q on the ⌘+tab app switcher.
In terms of the desktop environment, I feel Mac is severely lacking behind. I know there are very mixed opinions on Gnome, but to me the Gnome UX feels extremely well thought out in comparison.
The apple ecosystem might be very well integrated, but in terms of the macOS UX it feels the exact opposite. Why can’t I close an app from mission control? Why can’t I launch apps from mission control, but need to e.g. open launchpad first? In Gnome the activities view unities all of those experiences in a way that is seamless and just clicks for me, but in macOS everything seems to be separate apps/features that don’t play together at all (out of the box at least). Add to that all the other small frustrations that you need to address with third party tools, it is - for me at least - a very unproductive out-of-the-box experience.
Of course this is subjective, and might be partially an issue of (my lack of) skill/experience.